Lads' mag FHM used topless photo of girl, 14, without consent

The lads' mag FHM was yesterday found guilty of a significant breach of the Press Complaints Commission code for publishing a topless picture of a 14-year-old girl without her consent.

Solicitors acting on behalf of the girl's parents said the picture, included in a gallery of mobile phone photographs submitted by readers in the April 2007 issue, had a "significant effect on her emotionally and at school".

The Emap-owned title was heavily censured by the self-regulatory body for breaking rules on privacy and the protection of children after the parents of the girl, who was 14 when the picture was taken in 2005, complained.

So-called lads' mags, which enjoyed huge popularity in the 1990s but have slumped in appeal in recent years, have made reader contributions a key plank of their attempt to arrest declining sales.

The rise in material submitted by readers has gone hand in hand with the ubiquity of camera phones and competition from weekly titles that increasingly rely on naked female flesh as a selling point.

The PCC said the decision to publish the picture of the girl without adequately establishing consent represented a serious intrusion into her private life.

"The magazine had clearly not taken any sort of adequate care to establish the provenance of the photograph and whether it was right to publish it. This would have been the case regardless of how old she was, but the commission was particularly concerned about the impact on the girl in light of her youth," it added.

Furthermore, the magazine had aggravated the breach by failing to respond in a "swift and proportionate manner" once it realised its mistake, said the PCC.

FHM had argued that it received around 1,200 photographs each week for publication either from or on behalf of women posing topless or in their underwear. It was surprised the girl was 14 as she appeared to be older, and had "no reason to believe the image was taken without her consent".

In its ruling the PCC said: "It should have been much quicker to recognise the damage that publication would have caused the girl, and offered to publish an apology or take other steps to remedy the situation."

The ruling is the latest in a run of bad news for the sector. Emap, which is for sale, admitted in a trading statement this year that young men were increasingly turning to the internet rather than monthly magazines.

A spokesman for FHM said: "We regret any distress caused to either the girl or her parents. When the picture - a posed, topless shot - was submitted to us for publication it appeared to be of a much older girl taken by a male friend. The information with which we were provided also suggested this was the case."

He said more stringent measures had been put in place to ensure the provenance of pictures.